Animal Life

Animal life is abundant and varied throughout many parts of Russia. Wildlife in the tundra along the Arctic coast, northern Pacific coast, and offshore islands is surprisingly diverse, and includes polar bear, seal, walrus, polar fox, reindeer, and white hare. Birdlife includes white partridges, polar owls, gulls, and loons. Geese, swans, and ducks migrate into the region during summer, which is also then infested with mosquitoes, gnats, and other insects; fish abound in the streams. The taiga forest serves as a habitat for elk, brown bear, reindeer, lynx, sable, and a variety of forest birds, such as the owl and nightingale. Swamps in this zone have been stocked with muskrat from Canada; along with squirrel, muskrat is now the main source of pelts trapped in the wild. The broadleaf forests contain boar, deer, wolf, fox, mink, and a variety of birds, snakes, lizards, and tortoises. The forests of far southeastern Russia are known for their large Ussuri tigers, as well as leopard, bear, and deer. The steppe is inhabited primarily by rodents such as marmots and hamsters, but also contains a number of hooved animals such as the steppe antelope. The steppe polecat and the Tatar fox are the main beasts of prey. Birdlife includes the crane, eagle, and kestrel. The Caucasus region is particularly abundant in wildlife; mountain goats, chamois, Caucasian deer, wild boar, porcupine, leopard, hyena, jackal, squirrel, bear, and such game fowl as the black grouse, turkey hen, and stone partridge are found here. Reptiles and amphibians are also numerous.

Mineral Resources

Russia contains the greatest reserves of mineral resources of any country in the world. But while minerals are abundant, the can be expensive to extract because of their location, in remote areas with extreme conditions.

Russia is especially rich in mineral fuels. Estimates suggest that the republic holds about one-half of the world’s potential coal reserves and probably holds larger reserves of petroleum than any other nation. Coal deposits are scattered widely throughout the country; by far the largest fields lie in Siberia and far eastern Russia, but the most developed fields are in western Siberia, the northeastern European region, the area around Moscow, and the Urals. The major petroleum deposits are in western Siberia and the Volga-Ural region. Smaller deposits, however, are found in many other parts of the country. The principal natural-gas deposits, of which Russia holds about 40 percent of the world’s reserves, are along the Arctic coast of Siberia, in the northern Caucasus region, and in the republic of Komi in northwestern Russia. The primary iron-ore deposits are found in the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly halfway between Moscow and Ukraine; smaller deposits are scattered throughout the country. Minor deposits of manganese are scattered through the Urals. Other important iron alloys, such as nickel, tungsten, cobalt, and molybdenum, occur in adequate or even abundant quantities.

Russia is also well endowed with most of the nonferrous metals, except aluminum, which is one of the country’s major mineral deficits. Aluminum ores are found primarily in the Urals, northwestern European Russia, and southeastern Siberia. Copper, on the other hand, is abundant; reserves are found in the Urals, the Noril’sk area of eastern Siberia, and the Kola Peninsula. A large deposit east of Lake Baikal became commercially exploitable when the Baikal-Amur Magistral (BAM) railroad was completed in 1989.

Lead and zinc ores are abundant (often found with copper, gold, silver, and a variety of rare metals) in the northern Caucasus, far eastern Russia, and the western edge of the Kuznetsk Basin in Siberia. Russia has some of the world’s largest gold reserves, primarily in far eastern Russia, Siberia, and the Urals. Mercury deposits have been found in the Chukotka okrug in the far northeastern part of Russia. Large asbestos deposits exist in the central and southern Urals and in eastern Siberia.

Raw materials for chemical-manufacturing industries are also abundant in Russia. These include potassium and magnesium salt deposits in the Kama River district of the western Urals. Some of the world’s largest deposits of apatite (a mineral from which phosphate is derived) are in the central Kola Peninsula; other types of phosphate ores are found in other parts of the country. Common rock salt is found in the southwestern Urals and southwest of Lake Baikal. Surface deposits of salt are derived from salt lakes along the lower Volga Valley. Sulfur is found in the Urals. High-grade limestone, used for the production of cement, is found in many parts of the country, but particularly near Belgorod in central European Russia and in the Zhiguli Hills area of the middle Volga River Valley.